Contacts: In Singapore: Phil Hay +65 8181 5168 Global Cellular +1 202 489 2909, phay@worldbank.org Amy Stilwell +65 8181 5370 astilwell@worldbank.org In Washington: Malcolm Ehrenpreis, +1 (202) 458 52 19 mehrenpreis@worldbank.org Singapore, September 16, 2006—The World Bank today launched a new four-year, US$ 24.5 million plan to spur greater economic potential for women in key areas such as infrastructure, agriculture, and finance in developing countries. Called ‘Gender Equality as Smart Economics,’ the initiative will make the World Bank’s operations in poor coutnries more receptive to issues of women’s economic opportunity. Announcing the plan at the Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group in Singapore, World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz, said that communities and countries in the developing world pay a high price for not allowing women to live up to their full economic potential.
“While women’s economic participation is one of the key drivers of development, it’s often discounted as contributing to growth,” said the President of the World Bank Group, Paul Wolfowitz. “The international development community has made considerable progress in enabling women to acquire more and job skills. We have not, however, made the same level of progress in creating more opportunities for women to use their education and skills in the workplace.”
Women continue to suffer from persistently higher unemployment rates compared to men. In the Middle East and North Africa , for example, women are almost twice as likely as men to be unemployed: 19.2 percent of women are unemployed compared to 10.2 percent of men. Even when they are employed, women face barriers in breaking into the better-paid non-agricultural job market. In Sub-Saharan Africa only 36 percent of the non-agricultural wage workers are women. This number drops to 22 percent in North Africa, and 18 percent in South Asia . The plan will finance new measures to increase World Bank Group operations on gender equality in development sectors that do not traditionally address women’s empowerment. “Although we see women front and center in areas such as education and health, we need more of it in those areas that support shared economic growth—such as infrastructure, finance, private sector development and agriculture. These are critical areas: women’s ability to benefit from investments in roads, energy, water, extension and financial services will profit not only women, but also men, children and society as a whole, as economies grow and poverty is reduced,” said Wolfowitz. Using examples from developing countries, the new plan says that investing in women is already showing results, but needs to go much further, as women gain the tools and expertise to go itno business on their own, and buy land in their own names. In Vietnam, a legislative change that allowed for two names to appear on land-titles enabled women to use land for collateral in borrowing money; and in South Asia and other parts of the world where women are given access to formal credit markets, it is well documented that they have better repayment records than men. The new Gender Action Plan has received strong support from donor partners, and the Bank expects to finance about half the US$ 24.5 million budget through donor contributions. Germany has been a key partner in its development, and the Minister for Economic Cooperation and International Development, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who joined Paul Wolfowitz in announcing the launch of the new gender plan in Singapore, has agreed to champion the initiative, and will host a high-level conference on the plan in early 2007. “The Gender Action Plan is a milestone both for the World Bank and the international community. It represents an active appeal to enhance efforts towards gender equality and draws international attention to an aspect of gender equality that has received far too little attention in the past: the economic empowerment of women ”, said Minister Wieczorek-Zeul.
|
RSS